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| Pius XII Democracy and a Lasting Peace IntraText CT - Text |
THREE: NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF AN EFFECTIVE PEACE SETTLEMENT UNITY OF MANKIND AND SOCIETY OF PEOPLES
51. We were anxious, Beloved Sons and Daughters, to take the occasion of Christmastide to point out along what lines a democracy befitting human dignity can, in harmony with the law of nature and the designs of God as manifested in Revelation, secure happy results. Indeed, We are deeply convinced of the supreme importance of this problem for the peaceful progress of mankind.
52. But We also realize the exalted claims that this form of government makes on the moral maturity of the individual citizen; a moral maturity to which he could never hope to attain fully and securely if the light from the Cave of Bethlehem did not illumine the dark path along which the peoples are going forward through the stormy present towards a future which they hope will be more serene.
53. But how far will the representatives and pioneers of democracy be inspired in their deliberations by the conviction that the absolute order of beings and purposes, of which We have repeatedly spoken, comprises also, as a moral necessity and the crowning of social development, the unity of mankind and of the family of peoples?
54. On the recognition of this principle hangs the future of the peace. No world reform, no peace guarantee can abstract from it without being weakened and without being untrue to itself.
55. If, on the other hand, this same moral necessity were to find its realization in a society of peoples which succeeded in eliminating the structural defects and shortcomings of former systems, then the majesty of that order would regulate and inspire equally the deliberations of that society and the use of its instruments of sanction.
56. For this reason, too, one understands why the authority of such a society must be real and effective over the member states, in suchwise, however, that each of them retain an equal right of its own sovereignty.
57. Only thus will the spirit of sane democracy be able to pervade the vast and thorny ground of foreign relations.